Kent Conrad: “we come to the floor with a budget resolution that came out of the committee last week. I think it is important to set…”

“we come to the floor with a budget resolution that came out of the committee last week. I think it is important to set the stage in recognition of the fiscal condition of the country as we present this budget. We have seen a dramatic deterioration in the budget situation under this President. As we all know, he inherited a budget that was in surplus; in fact, a budget that was estimated to have a future of surpluses so large that the head of the Federal Reserve said we were in danger of paying off the Federal debt. That is a danger I would like to have. The President then took us on a fiscal course that has produced four of the five largest deficits in our history. In fact, it may turn out to be five of the largest deficits in our history, depending on how events unfold this year. We can see in the previous years we were having budget surpluses, and then the President took us into deficit and deepened those deficits until we reached a record deficit in 2004 of $413 billion. Now we see those levels being challenged in this year and perhaps next as well. The result of these massive deficits is this President has built a wall of debt that is unprecedented. When President Bush came into office in 2000, the debt at the end of his first year--we do not hold him responsible for his first year because he is working on the budget he inherited--the debt stood at $5.8 trillion. At the end of last year, the debt had reached over $9 trillion.”